PRISM is meant to serve as the LGBT+ organization on campus.
When I first came to Illinois Institute of Technology, PRISM was advertised as a space for queer students to socialize and have some fun while still educating. Now that the fall 2025 semester has started, I kept my eye out for any events to be posted for the organization, but there has been utter silence. The last announcement about an event on Discord is listed at April 19, 2025. This goes the same for the Instagram page. It doesn’t feel like PRISM has tried to recruit anybody to join the club, which causes so many new queer students on campus to not have a safe space dedicated to them. It’s very possible that the organization is inactive, which wouldn’t be surprising based on how inactive it was last semester.
From what I recall, there is also meant to be a physical safe space on campus as well. There is a room in MTCC labeled as the “PRISM Safe Space”, but it’s never open. Last year, when it WAS open, it was cramped and full of junk that clearly wasn’t owned by the organization. It’s really frustrating to see a space that’s meant for students to gather and relax be treated like a storage unit. It feels almost disrespectful to the space to treat it that way.
Speaking of “safe”, the Discord has been rampant with inappropriate messages in the past. While some were from students who joined just to troll the organization (it was put to a stop very quickly), some inappropriate messages, usually sexual in nature, were posted. The majority of the time, they were put in the “memes” channel, and I personally know that it would have driven me away from joining the organization if I had randomly stumbled across this Discord server. Some things are meant for personal servers, I hope that the new moderators for the server are better at limiting inappropriate content.
When speaking with a transfer student recently, I was told that he stopped going to PRISM events because the events were overly political and the group felt very clique-y. Unfortunately for the executive board members who have been posting solely about current events, sometimes the queer community just wants to have fun and forget about the dangers we all know we are in. There was the annual drag event last semester and the two years prior, but there haven’t been any other events that really felt fun. I don’t believe that events necessarily have to be fully related to the organization’s purpose.
There’s also the complaint that I’ve heard from multiple students: PRISM doesn’t seem inclusive towards straight and cisgender students. The 312 CampusGroups page clearly states that the purpose of the club is “to act as the representative and be the Alliance for Gender and Sexuality on the Illinois Tech Campus.” Then why have many of the members been outwardly aggressive towards our allies? I can understand wanting more queer than straight students in an organization geared towards the LGBT+ community, but it’s an odd choice to make non-queer students feel unwelcome. I’ll give credit where credit is due, I believe that former events coordinator Elio Armas-Rojo tried his hardest to plan events that would be inclusive to the larger community, but it is clear that there has been zero effort put in since he left the position.
While I hope that PRISM will eventually come back to life, preferably like a beautiful butterfly emerging from a sad, cramped cocoon, you’re currently better off finding your own smaller friend groups of queer students somewhere else. I wish the best of luck to whoever picks up the mantle after whoever ran it into the ground.